Pattern Seekers – Episode 17: Forbidding Island (Part One)

29 November, 2014

After having investigated some strange caves last time, this episode starts with a new arrival: Kurtz Dreiman was on the brink of being slain by satrapal agents when he found himself wakening on the black and white floor of the Complex alone but unharmed. He goes exploring, encountering a stream of ants before moving into Thea’s room where Thea and Pho explain to him where he is and take him to meet the Shaper.

While uncertain of the Shaper and the Pattern, Kurtz sees little choice but to go along for the moment. Soon enough he, Thea, Tack and Mirror are summoned for a new task. The ancient home of a great dragon slayer may have been rediscovered but it will require a short sea voyage, luckily a skill set that Tack has.

The Portal places them on an abandoned hilltop among equally abandoned standing stones, marking their arrival point they head down toward the fishing village they can see down the the hillside. Making their way down, they arrive to much polite interest. They go to the one inn in the village, the Mermaid, where they are to meet their contact, Gordian, who will provide them with a boat. That they do, finding a newly built boat, fully equipped with a week of supplies for five. Tack christens it the “Lady Bess”. After a night spent befriending the locals through gambling, and losing, story telling and buying drinks, they board the boat for their journey.

Setting out with the fisherfolk, they soon leave the fisher behind, as they keep close to shore and the goal of our venturers is much further out to sea. Indeed, it is not until later afternoon on the next day that they spot their goal, a small island with a tall mountain at its center. Sailing in, they find a pebble beach with a set of stone pillars extending out into the sea that looked like they once supported a dock. They land on the beach and pull the boat up on it.

The beyond the beach is forest, a very overgrown stone path lead off from where the docks once were. They soon notice forms moving deep in the forest but than cannot be seen clearly. Then, a hail of darts followed by a swarm of vicious monkeys armed with crude darts and spikes. They are savage but not particularly strong nor brave and are quickly driven back with magic and steel leaving behind quite a few dead monkeys. After patching themselves up, they continue through the forest until it stops with fields of now wild grains spreading before them.

Moving down the road, they come to a fork in the road with a statue of a warrior bearing a shield, sadly age and weather have erased any useful identifiers. They take the right fork and it takes them to an abandoned village, the house just seem abandoned and victims of age, but the temple at the center of town had been torn open and whatever statuary and altar had been removed. As it is getting dark, they camp in the temple with watches. Around midnight, the town is sufficed with a pale light and ghost forms of the villagers can be seen going about their day to day tasks, ignoring the venturers. When Kurtz touches one, the entire vision starts to unravel and within minutes it is gone.

The next morning, after a cold breakfast, they continue their exploration returning to the fork in the road and heading up. There they find an abandoned water mill and dry mill stream. Further up the road branches around the mountain, they go right and find the mill reservoir green with algae, they quickly skirt it and continue on their way until they find a stairway ascending and descending that crosses the path, they take that up. Stopping at a fortified watch point, complete with shelter and water, from which they can look down into the ruined village. Pausing to catch their breath, they continue up, when a flying shape is spotted. Tack uses his telescope for a closer look and confirmed that it is a dracoform, unfortunately they are on the side of a mountain stairway cut into a rock face which leaves few options and they head up as it closes. A brutal fight with a twin-tailed scythe drake follows that sees Tack leaping onto the drake and climbing up its back, Kurtz’ thigh being slashed through to the bone, Pho taken down by another tail slice before the drake finally was brought down, plummeting to a crushing end on the watch point platform several hundred feet down. They did make sure it was really quite sincerely dead before continuing on to take some considerable time and effort patching themselves back together with needle, thread, bandages, herbs and magic.

After patching themselves up, they -more cautiously- continued upward, finally making it to the top where there is an abandoned fortified manor in front of which is a fountain that has obviously been turned into some sort of bone strewn nest.

And thus ends Part One, Part Two next time we get together with this group for SoS and report here.

Notes: This was A’s first time with Pathfinder and, as a new roleplayer, he found it a little overwhelming but he was getting the hang of the system by the end. Scythe drakes found here.